The Computer Buzz

December 3rd, 2009

Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory
 

A Better Way

Whether for business, school or personal use, your PC has programs and files that are important to you. Most of us have come to rely on our PC to manage communications, transactions and record keeping as well as a provide information and recreation.

All programs and data files are stored on the hard drive. The hard drive is the hardest working device in your PC. At five to ten thousand RPMs, the outer perimeter is traveling up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour. The hard drive is made up of several discs (platters) stacked like pancakes. Between each platter a read head jitters back and forth between data tracks one hundred times per second. A cushion of air a few molecules thick separates the read head from the spinning disc. With all the physics going on, it’s small wonder that the hard drive is one of the components in your PC that is most prone to mechanical failure.

Non-mechanical (software) problems can also render your programs and data inaccessible. Viruses and assorted mal-ware can disable functions and corrupt the operating system or applications. “Bit rot” refers to the fact that operating systems simply tend to corrupt over time. Power surges, improper shut down, adding and removing programs, environmental magnetic flux, cosmic rays, you name it. All these things may contribute to the erosion of your PCs software.

Optical discs or Internet based services like “Carbonite” are easy ways to protect data files but if you wish to preserve not only your files but also your programs and settings you will need an external hard drive. Our experiences with integrated external drive “packages” like the Maxtor “one touch” and others have not been good. The enclosures are shoddy and failure prone and the drives cannot be used outside their integrated enclosure. When the on board hard drive fails you must replace it or erase it, then clone from the external before you can get back to work. There is a better way.

Using an external hard drive enclosure that permits the removal of the drive allows you to immediately swap the back-up drive into your PC in the event a hardware or software problem. If the problem is software, the offending drive can be installed in the external case, erased and then cloned from the good drive. If the problem is hardware, the replacement drive can be put in the external enclosure and used as a backup while the erstwhile backup becomes the permanent internal drive. Either way you are never down.

If your on board drive becomes infected with a virus and won’t allow you to run a scan you can swap it to the external enclosure, put the external drive in the PC and run the scans from the clean drive.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. We have the removable enclosures and hard drives and we can show you how to use them. Stop in and we’ll help you get started.